I found this book to be a bit… pretentious? The author uses a lot of commonly unused words to convey the intellect of the main character, which overall made the reading experience more difficult.

Speaking of Edwin, I did not like him. He’s too obsessive, and I have no idea what Adam found so appealing about him? It was insta-love, which is my least favourite trope because it’s so ridiculously unbelievable and my aromantic ass can’t stand it.

After how much I adored Boyfriend. Material, this was such a disappointment to me.

“Waiting for the Flood” is a forever favorite of mine. I loved re-reading the new edition, and I adored "Chasing the Light," which spoke to my melancholic soul. There's a timelessness to both stories: In "Waiting," the flood that brings Adam into Edwin's life results in a sense of suspended time, outside of the normal structure of daily life. "Chasing," meanwhile, takes place during the winter holidays when the world hibernates, and an accident brings Marius into Leo's life (and boat) for a few days.

I'm always here for a redemption story, and was thus inclined to give Marius the benefit of the doubt, despite what we learn of him and his treatment of Edwin in "Waiting." At the start of the story, his prevailing traits seem to be self-loathing, scorn and sarcasm, but it soon becomes clear that--as he himself says--Marius is simply lost. And what follows is a moving journey from "restlessness and recklessness" towards hope and light.

I loved Leo, with his boat that he built, and his man bun, and his fluffy jacket potatoes. And his honesty and heart and the quiet, contained life he's carved out for himself. He reminded me a bit of Levi from Kate Clayborn's "Georgie, All Along" (though minus Hank, the greatest romance dog of all time).

A gorgeous love story, "Chasing" is also a meditation on creative work. We're first introduced to Marius as a painter in "Waiting," but in "Chasing," he describes himself by saying "once upon a time I was an artist." What does it mean to be an artist, and is it dependent upon actively producing art? Marius grapples with this question and with finding his inspiration (actually, this also reminded me of a beloved Clayborn character, "Love Lettering's" calligrapher Meg).

"Chasing" is everything I adore in a romance. It made me think and laugh and cry. And want to eat potatoes.

Alexis Hall is very talented at creating tender characters and soft, melancholic atmospheres.

Lovely stories for Edwin and Marius, even if it was a bit slow for me. I really enjoyed reading
Marius' point of view, because obviously he wasn't the main character of the story as a whole, but there are always two people in a couple, and they always feel something when that relationship ends.

4.5/5 Stars

Alexis Hall does it again! This novel was a brilliantly woven tapestry of the past and how we hope and move forward into the future.

We meet Edwin in a lonely place trying to figure out how and if he wants to move forward after Marius has left him after several years together. Alexis Hall captures just how complicated those feeling are, creating complex and utterly human characters.

In the second act we get to see how Marius is fairing post break up and how even though you end the relationship it can still leave its mark. How internally we can really hold a grudge against ourselves.

This creative novel shows us what happens afterwards and how you can still find happiness with someone new.

If you love LQBTQIA+ books multidimensional characters, I would absolutely recommend picking up this book. Thank you to the publisher for providing an advance copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Chasing the Light (and of course Waiting for the Flood) fits the Spires series perfectly, and I think that's the biggest compliment I could give.

I'm a fan of Alexis Hall's books, but the Spires series is and probably will always be my favorite. I can't find the right word to describe it, but there's something about it that's just magic.

Over the years, I've reread Waiting for the Flood several times, especially when I needed comfort. It feels like a hug, or sitting by the fire, sipping a cup of tea while snuggling under a warm blanket on a rainy day. It goes without saying that I was excited to learn that there would be an additional story about Marius in this re-release.

Where Edwin is sweet and adorable, Marius isn't. He's unkind and hateful, and yet, I loved him just as much. He's relatable, maybe not in the way he treats people, but on a certain level. I get that he sometimes feels trapped. I get his anxieties, his jumbled emotions, and the feeling of being utterly lost sometimes. I understood why he constantly lashed out at others, and I wanted nothing more than for him to be happy.

Before I start spoiling things, I just want to say I loved it, and the endings to both stories were extremely satisfying. I recommend it to all, and I'm grateful it fits the series so well.

Thank you, Alexis Hall, for writing a new favorite, and thanks to Sourcebooks Casablanca for a free copy!✨

I enjoyed the experience of reading about both sides in the aftermath of a breakup. There was no cruelty or abuse or cheating, just a relationship that didn’t work out. We meet both men as they navigate their way through a life without their long-term partner and learn how to live without who they thought they were when they were together. Edwin, the dumpee, gets to his happy ending first, which feels fair. Marius, the dumper, takes a little longer to get back on his feet. Expect Alexis Hall’s usual charm and wit in this story.

WAITING FOR THE FLOOD doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it adds a certain spin to it. Alexis Hall writes genre fiction, full stop, and readers who like the genre will find Hall very much a master of it. Though Hall plays with a number of romance fiction tropes, he avoids tropes about gay men and gay male relationships—truly an achievement for this genre. Moreover, his writing brings out the loneliness of contemporary (gay) male life, which adds an important depth to his storytelling, making it more likely to resonate with gay male readers rather than the typical straight, cis-female audience for m/m fiction. But WAITING FOR THE FLOOD will not expand Hall's audience beyond the romance genre, though he seems ready to push beyond those limits and write for a broader audience. One hope he does.

I really enjoyed this novel. The characters were well developed and the plot flowed in a way that made sense. I would recommend this book to others and look forward to reading others by this author.

I love Alexis Hall! These two novellas were touching, spicy and fun. Both stories carried emotional weight, an impactful journey of self-discovery, and of course, love!

I loved this new edition of Waiting for the Flood, now with its companion novella Chasing the Light.

Waiting for the Flood, was, as always (this was my third time reading the first novella) a cozy blanket on a rainy day, equal parts melancholy and hopeful. I love this soft, quiet story so much.

Chasing the Light is a gorgeous companion novella to Waiting for the Flood. The two stories beautifully dialogue with one another, in a way I don’t think I’d seen before and certainly didn’t expect from the loose connections otherwise present in the Spires series. Chasing continued the melancholic but hopeful flavor of Waiting, providing continued independence for both Edwin and Marius while allowing their lives to come back together in a new way.

Chasing is the story of Marius, the man who left Edwin prior to Waiting, some year or so after Edwin and Adam’s meeting. Marius is all sharp claws and hissing and teeth and longing — a true feral kitten. He’s lost and listless and deeply sad, and ends up in the care of a scruffy but generous stranger on a house boat after spraining his ankle on Christmas Eve (Yes! It’s also a Christmas story!! Our second in several months from Alexis Hall!). It’s a story of perseverance and opening up and finding self worth, of light in the darkness, and I found it simultaneously excruciating and bright, like a sunrise on a cold midwinter day.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!

With Alexis Hall's books, you know you will get very damaged protagonists who fall into relationships with quirky but very well centered partners. In this book, we start with Edwin, a lonely young man suffering with OCD and a broken heart. But in this new edition, there is an additional novella (about half the book) that follows Edwin's ex, Marius, as he grapples with his own life troubles. This is a bit less depressing than Hall's other books and admittedly not much happens. It's about Edwin and Marius happening into the perfect partners for each other, and despite themselves.

Story: Edwin lives in the house he bought with Marius - except that it was Edwin's dream and not Marius' and so now Edwin lives alone. When a flood is predicted for the neighborhood, Edwin and his eccentric neighbor can hardly be bothered to even evacuate. That is, until emergency support supervisor Adam comes in town to help the community - and perhaps mostly Edwin himself. Marius, meanwhile, was dealt some bad news in the recent past and is having a hard time coming to terms with it. A chance meeting with a young man living in a river boat may just be the balm he needs.

In this case, both relationships do indeed feel abrupt and we're never really given a perspective that would help us to understand why the well adjusted and grounded individuals would be interested in our hapless protagonists. Indeed, Edwin is rather inept and rude while Marius is thoroughly unlikable. Author Hall has a way of turning antiheroes into someone you root for - but even I have to admit that those kinds of relationships can feel more like codependences than healthy boyfriends.

This is a quick and easy read since both books feel like novellas. There are no great melodramas, misunderstandings, etc. Just two men in each story getting to know each other better and getting over themselves. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

Chasing the Light

Waiting For the Flood is a long-standing favorite and is practically perfect in every way, no notes. This review is for the new accompanying novella Chasing the Light.

I’d like to give Chasing the Light the excuse of being paired with WftF so you theoretically read it right after. Which is a hard act to follow for any book. I love almost everything Alexis Hall wrote before 2020, but almost everything he’s written since Boyfriend Material hasn’t worked for me. Setting these two novellas as a pair shines a light on the things that have changed in his writing and why I haven’t clicked with it of late. And it boils down to something that is going to sound pretty harsh: I don’t feel Hall offers the same level of care and compassion to his characters or readers that he used to.

The thing is, I can’t say that Chasing the Light is a bad book. Hall is as accomplished a writer as ever. I highlighted moving prose, laughed out loud at the wit, have a clear picture in my mind of a narrow boat on a wintry river. But it’s missing all the heart that makes Waiting for the Flood so stunning. I have never finished WftF thinking of Marius as the bad guy. After reading Chasing the Light, I don’t think I like Marius at all. He’s given baggage but it feels like an afterthought. Oh, oops, this guy is kind of a dick, better give a reason for that. It’s presented as more of a character quirk or as justification for how abrasively he behaves. We don’t get any real exploration of Marius’s pain or how that is informing the person he is when we meet him. To be clear, characters do not always have to be “likeable” to be compelling. Something about Marius, though, kept me at arms length. Maybe this needed to be a full-length novel to get there but ultimately I’m left frustrated with Marius being such a tool and confused about why Leo is interested in him.

Leo, too, doesn’t feel fully formed. He is a tangle of threads that I never felt I truly grabbed onto. What does he want? How did he get here? The “prison changed me” thing felt too easy, too straight-line to be authentic. And why the fuck does he find Marius appealing, when all he’s done is try to act like the biggest asshole he can the entire time? Again, these are things that could have potentially been resolved in a longer format but my takeaway feeling is uneasiness about the future of this relationship.

The other thing that strikes me about Chasing the Light in comparison to Waiting for the Flood is that this one is quite divorced from community. Though WftF features a lot of lonely characters it is ultimately about connection. Marius and Leo are both hardcore in retreat, seeming to actively distance themselves from other people. Marius comes across as resentful toward everyone no matter how much they care for him and Leo has chosen to sever all ties for reasons were given minimal insight into. Neither of them seem to have friends (and Hall usually writes great friendships). But the isolation doesn’t seem to be serving any purpose. Neither is truly aware of the implications and the resolution of the story doesn’t seem to bring them any closer to a sense of being in the world. It’s just so bizarrely…empty.

One final quibble: one of Marius’s baggage quirks is an eating disorder, though it’s never labeled as such. Essentially, he denies himself food to prove to himself that he can. It’s implied that he’s underweight. None of the other characters seem to be aware of this, so it’s presented merely as evidence of Marius being all jagged around the edges. The treatment of disordered eating in Boyfriend Material was my one concern from that book, so encountering something like this again was jarring.

Maybe I’m being extremely critical. I kind of feel entitled to that, since one of my former favorite authors is now writing stories that leave me feeling vaguely irritated, unsettled, and disappointed. But Waiting for the Flood is literally RIGHT THERE showing us that at some point, Hall had the capacity to write stories that are compelling, moving, and caring. I want that Alexis Hall back.

The description of the book seemed interesting, so I wanted to check the story out. Unfortunately, it is not working for me right now. It is nothing against the story or the author, but I couldn't get into the story/characters. I may try and find a physical copy to add the my library when it is released, though, because I think my readers could like it!

Adored Edwin and kept picturing Ben Whishaw. Just adored the setting, and especially the story of Edwin's character. This was such a beautiful picture of heartbreak and new love. I loved the contrasting perspectives included as well.

Thank you NetGalley for a free e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Alexis Hall's "Waiting for the Flood" is a poignant and beautifully written LGBTQIAP+ romance that delicately explores themes of love, loss, and healing. Set against the backdrop of a flooding Oxford, the story centers on Edwin Tully, a man quietly nursing the wounds of a past relationship, as he navigates the complexities of opening his heart again. The arrival of Adam Dacre, an employee from the Environment Agency, brings an unexpected opportunity for Edwin to confront his past and embrace the possibility of new love.

Hall's narrative is distinguished by its lyrical prose and deep emotional resonance. The character of Edwin is crafted with great care, allowing readers to intimately experience his journey from heartbreak to healing. The use of the flooding river as a metaphor for Edwin's emotional state is both clever and effective, adding depth to the narrative.

The romance between Edwin and Adam is handled with a gentle and realistic touch. Their connection, blossoming amidst the chaos of the flood, is a testament to the novel's central message: that love can be a healing force. The slow and tender development of their relationship stands in contrast to the tumultuous nature of Edwin's past with Marius, providing a hopeful counterpoint to the theme of loss.

However, some readers might find the pace of the novel a bit slow, as it takes its time to delve into Edwin's inner world. The introspective nature of the narrative focuses more on character development and emotional exploration than on plot-driven action.

In addition to the main story, "Waiting for the Flood" includes the bonus novella "Chasing the Light," which follows Marius's own journey of rediscovering love and life. This addition offers a fuller perspective on the characters' past and complements the main narrative beautifully.

Overall, Alexis Hall's "Waiting for the Flood" is a moving and lyrical exploration of love, loss, and the redemptive power of new beginnings. It is a touching romance that will appeal to readers who enjoy character-driven stories and a thoughtful, poetic approach to the genre.

I confess, I have already read this in its prior publication (along with the whole Spires quartet -- Glitterland; Waiting for the Flood; For Real; Pansies). The reason I requested it on NetGalley was, firstly, I wanted to read Waiting for the Flood again, and secondly, to read the bonus story about Marius.

First: I wanted to read Waiting for the Flood again beacause I think it is the BEST of the Spires series, and is fighting for top spot amongst all Alexis Hall books, I would argue. It is just such a beautiful, sort of quiet, shy but shining story - It has almost Austen-ian vibes in its restraint and small gestures, but big feelings behind them; and monumental life changes that turn on seemingly small encounters. I just love it. So much. Happy sigh.

The second story (Marius' epologue, if you will) was also enjoyable to read, but wasn't quite as much my cup of tea. I enjoyed the chance encounter with the houseboat guy, and I did like the houseboat guy himself, but I found Marius' character just more difficult to get into (I know - he is SUPPOSED to be like this, he absolutely 100% has REASONS to be like this) -- but it's a character type that I just don't love to read as much as some others (e.g. I also struggled to get into the Sarah J Maas book that focused on Nesta, I don't remember which title is which - you know which one I mean) - so, still glad I got to read this, lovely writing as always, but not my personal fave Hall story.

5 stars for Edwin; 3 for Marius. Lots of thanks to Alexis Hall - please keep writing , I will keep reading :)

Alexis Hall is one of my favorite authors. I have been trying to find this book for years and I am so happy I finally read it! I loved how we got two separate stories. Great writing, flawed characters who are so real and you care about them and want them to live happily ever after. Great book!

Overall I found Waiting for the Flood to be awfully sweet and full of Alexis Hall's signature wit. And as per usual with this author I was really drawn to the characters; Edwin was a little awkward and shy, and Adam was kindhearted with such a gentle soul. I really enjoyed watching Edwin grow so comfortable the more time he spent with Adam and found their romance very heartwarming indeed.


After learning about Marius in Waiting for the Flood, and being very intrigued by his character, I was excited to get his story in Chasing the Light.

He and Leo, the other hero in this romance, have a bit of a meet disaster...at least for poor Marius. But those initial circumstances certainly led to some interesting forced proximity moments. And it also revealed how much of a caretaker Leo was and let's be honest, I was living for all of that. As for Marius he was frustrating at times but over the course of the story we really saw how much he was going through and my heart ached a bit for him. When it all came to head near the conclusion of the story it was so satisfying to read and showed the importance of closure for everyone. And I just adored the ending.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the ARC.

This is my second time reading Waiting for the Flood, and I liked it more than the first time. It's meditative and sweet and sad, and even if some of the metaphors feel a little on the nose, it worked for me. 4 stars.

In Chasing the Light, Alexis Hall takes the absent villain, Marius, from Waiting for the Flood and makes him the protagonist of this slightly longer novella. There's a similar style meet-cute, similar whimsical banter, and a love interest who is, like Adam in Waiting for the Flood, a bit vaguely drawn compared to the main character. Plus the usual metaphor stuff. Marius spends the vast majority of the book behaving like a colossal jerk. It turns out he's dealing with something that most reasonable people would find devastating, and yet it seems that he was always a difficult person, so it's hard to attribute all of his terrible behavior to that one thing, which might make it more understandable, if not necessarily forgivable. This was prettily written, but I think it was unwise to draw Marius as such a bad guy and then try to give him a redemption arc. I also had some issues with the love interest's backstory, but I can't address them without spoilers. Overall, I found the book unconvincing. 3 stars.

For the pair of novellas, this is maybe 3.5 stars, but since Waiting for the Flood is so good and is the title on the cover, I'm going with 4.

This is a two-part, dual first person narration. The first part focuses on Edwin who is still getting over the end of his relationship when a flood of the Thames River in Oxford threatens his home. Edwin finds support and attraction in the flood mitigation expert Adam. This part of the book was published previously and I read it again with pleasure.

The second part of the book focuses on Marius, the man who left Edwin years before with no explanation. Since then Marius has sunk lower and lower into depression and self-loathing. He has lost his ability to create art, which is central to his identity. At a low point, also known as Christmas Eve, he injures himself outside a houseboat on the Thames. The owner of the houseboat, a former rich kid named Leo, comes to his rescue.

Presented as two novellas, the two halves function as one whole novel, although the second half, Chasing the Light, is less successful than the first half.